He was forced to resign, his particular brand of piety not seeming to track with the creed of his congregation. The quality of his pacifism may be judged from the fact that he excused the Germans for their atrocities, saying that if France and Belgium had not resisted, there never would have been any atrocities! This man applied for a position to go to France in Government war work. His application was refused.
It is, of course, well known that the U. S. troops in large part sailed from the vicinity of the City of New York, or upper New Jersey. Of course, also, all the preparations for this war, all of the expense of it, all the time and trouble of it, focused exactly on the number of troops we actually could get on the way. The utmost secrecy was maintained by our Government as to the number of troops, the ships that carried them, and the time and place of sailing. The mother of a boy on his way to France did not know he had sailed until a curt card from the other side of the water told her that he was in France. Practically all the people of the United States, however, accepted this secrecy as a necessary war measure—that being obviously and permanently necessary in this war, where the risks of the sea included the danger of the German submarine.
Naturally, also, the German spies on this side of the water would do everything in their power to learn precisely the facts which our Government sought to conceal—the number of troops going over, the times of sailings of the transports, and so forth. Naturally also, our system of espionage—the divisions of Military Intelligence, Naval Intelligence, Department of Justice, and the auxiliary work of the American Protective League—would do all they could to prevent German espionage from attaining its own purpose in regard to this knowledge.
When the Government seized the Port of Embarkation at Hoboken, much interest was shown in the former Hamburg-American and North German Lloyd line steamers located there. There were numerous rumors that these boats were to be blown up by the Germans. Of these, the largest was the Vaterland, which was re-christened Leviathan.
